At what points are Dark Eldar the strongest?

I'd therefore say each talos does:

5 attacks while charging:

Hitting on 3's so 3.333333 hits. Wounding normally on 2-5 so about 2.22 normal wounds. These get FNP so about 1.48 actual wounds.

1 in 6 hits result in ID so 0.555555 hits will result in d3 wounds (average 2) so 1.11111 wounds

So a talos will inflict on average 2.59 unsaved, failed FNP wounds. If it charges.

I probably did something wrong there.


EDIT: they also get an almost negligible HoW attack on the charge inflicting an additional 0.074 unsaved, failed FNP wound. Bit depressing that that is the effectiveness of a s7 guaranteed hit attack on a WK - you'd need 13.5 of them to inflict a single actual wound.

There's precious few 500 pt lists available to any codexes that could compete with that monstrous Eldar list.

As Dark Eldar, well, it's an uphill battle the entire time. I think if you're playing an alpha strike pure Venom spam list and you got first turn, you could probably do a fair amount of damage against the rest of the Eldar before falling apart.

75 Lhamean, w/ Dual Cannon Venom
115 5 Wyches, w/ Dual Cannon Venom
115 5 Wyches, w/ Dual Cannon Venom
65 Dual Cannon Venom
65 Dual Cannon Venom
65 Dual Cannon Venom

If you can kill most of the bikes by the end of your turn 1, which by all accounts is not unreasonable, you simply play objectives, and pepper the Wraithknight with some poison while kiting as best as you can. Once you hit turn 4, you can safely throw the Wyches at the WK as they can hold him up with their 4++ and Fearless for the rest of the game.

Kehmor wrote:

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

@Kehmor: I didn't do the math on the Talos. Someone else did. I think it was Count Adhemar. Just citing his results.

As for the instant death vs Gargantuan's FnP, this is the rule from GCs section:

Rulebook wrote:

Any attack that normally inflicts Instant Death or says that the target model is removed
from play inflicts D3 Wounds on a Gargantuan Creature or Flying Gargantuan Creature
instead.

Since it says any attack that normally inflicts instant death inflicts d3 wounds INSTEAD, that would mean that you simply treat it as D3 normal wounds against a Gargantuan Creature instead of ID, by my reading. What do you think?

I wouldn't agree with that actually.

Ok, then we simply disagree. But it directly says what it does INSTEAD of inflicting an instant death wound. See the explanation below for the paradox that your interpretation causes. If you still don't agree, we may as well drop the issue.

CptMetal wrote:

I think it's D3 wounds instead of remove from play. But when you look at the rules for feel No Pain you'll see that it says that it can't be taken against Destroyer and instant death attacks.

It actually doesn't say that. It says Feel no Pain may not be taken against WOUNDS that have the instant death special rule. If we converted a wound that has instant death to D3 wounds that have instant death, we'd then have to continuously convert said wounds to D3 wounds, because that's what it tells us to do for wounds that have instant death against GCs. That's why it says INSTEAD. It loses instant death and instead does D3 wounds against Gargantuan creatures.

hydranixx wrote:

If you can kill most of the bikes by the end of your turn 1, which by all accounts is not unreasonable

This is assuming you go first. If you don't, I'd imagine at least 3 units would be dead. That said, if you DO go first, that's probably the best sort of bet for DE, to simply play objectives.

hydranixx wrote:

Once you hit turn 4, you can safely throw the Wyches at the WK as they can hold him up with their 4++ and Fearless for the rest of the game.

6's on the stomp chart ignore invuln saves. Since there are 4 fight phases per turn and an average of 2 stomps per phase, that's 4 stomps per turn, which will mean you're more likely than not to get at least 1 6, plus his normal 8 attacks per turn.

It'd be interesting to see how the list fared if they went first, though. The wraithknight doesn't get many attacks, so he'd probably kill 1-2 vehicles per turn, and maybe get the occasional charge. I think the wraithknight would probably have to try to table you if you killed both units of scatterbikes at the top of turn 1, depending on the mission.

Yet another example of sloppy rules from GW. I know! I’m as shocked as you are...

There are three rules here that are supposed to be interacting.

Instant Death
If a model suffers an unsaved Wound from an attack with this special rule, it is reduced to 0 Wounds and is removed as a casualty.

Unstoppable
Any attack that normally inflicts Instant Death or says that the target model is removed from play inflicts D3 Wounds on a Gargantuan Creature or Flying Gargantuan Creature instead.

Feel No Pain
Feel No Pain saves may not be taken against Destroyer attacks or against unsaved Wounds that have the Instant Death special rule.

Strictly speaking, wounds do not have the Instant Death rule, attacks do, according to the ID rules above. This also appears to be supported by the Unstoppable rule but this doesn't interact properly with FNP. A reasonable compromise would appear to be that, as the attack has the ID rule, instead of killing the target outright it inflicts D3 wounds but that FNP still cannot be taken against these wounds as they stem from an attack with the ID rule.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Yet another example of sloppy rules from GW. I know! I’m as shocked as you are...

There are three rules here that are supposed to be interacting.

Instant Death
If a model suffers an unsaved Wound from an attack with this special rule, it is reduced to 0 Wounds and is removed as a casualty.

Unstoppable
Any attack that normally inflicts Instant Death or says that the target model is removed from play inflicts D3 Wounds on a Gargantuan Creature or Flying Gargantuan Creature instead.

Feel No Pain
Feel No Pain saves may not be taken against Destroyer attacks or against unsaved Wounds that have the Instant Death special rule.

Strictly speaking, wounds do not have the Instant Death rule, attacks do

I don't agree with the green part, due to the wording of the orange and red parts. An attack with instant death normally confers instant death onto the wound. That's the only reading that makes all of the rules function as written together.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Count Adhemar wrote:

Yet another example of sloppy rules from GW. I know! I’m as shocked as you are...

There are three rules here that are supposed to be interacting.

Instant Death
If a model suffers an unsaved Wound from an attack with this special rule, it is reduced to 0 Wounds and is removed as a casualty.

Unstoppable
Any attack that normally inflicts Instant Death or says that the target model is removed from play inflicts D3 Wounds on a Gargantuan Creature or Flying Gargantuan Creature instead.

Feel No Pain
Feel No Pain saves may not be taken against Destroyer attacks or against unsaved Wounds that have the Instant Death special rule.

Strictly speaking, wounds do not have the Instant Death rule, attacks do

I don't agree with the green part, due to the wording of the orange and red parts. An attack with instant death normally confers instant death onto the wound. That's the only reading that makes all of the rules function as written together.

Or, alternatively:

Feel No Pain
Feel No Pain saves may not be taken against Destroyer attacks or against unsaved Wounds caused by attacks that have the Instant Death special rule.

Count Adhemar wrote:

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Count Adhemar wrote:

Yet another example of sloppy rules from GW. I know! I’m as shocked as you are...

There are three rules here that are supposed to be interacting.

Instant Death
If a model suffers an unsaved Wound from an attack with this special rule, it is reduced to 0 Wounds and is removed as a casualty.

Unstoppable
Any attack that normally inflicts Instant Death or says that the target model is removed from play inflicts D3 Wounds on a Gargantuan Creature or Flying Gargantuan Creature instead.

Feel No Pain
Feel No Pain saves may not be taken against Destroyer attacks or against unsaved Wounds that have the Instant Death special rule.

Strictly speaking, wounds do not have the Instant Death rule, attacks do

I don't agree with the green part, due to the wording of the orange and red parts. An attack with instant death normally confers instant death onto the wound. That's the only reading that makes all of the rules function as written together.

Or, alternatively:

Feel No Pain
Feel No Pain saves may not be taken against Destroyer attacks or against unsaved Wounds caused by attacks that have the Instant Death special rule.

That's not the quote from the book that I have for FnP, so I don't know where you're getting that wording from. Are you just adding in the blue text? Because that confuses people and you shouldn't quote rules in that manner without clearly saying you're altering the wording of the rules. The wording I have is:

Rulebook wrote:

Feel No Pain
Feel No Pain saves may not be taken against Destroyer attacks or against unsaved
Wounds that have the Instant Death special rule.

My argument for interpretation doesn't require adding in lines of text that don't exist. All the rules fall comfortably into place if you follow my interpretation of the 1 contentious line, whereas if you follow yours, you have to alter OTHER lines in other places to make it function properly. To me, that would indicate the the interpretation that requires the least alteration of other sections of the book is likely the correct one.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

That's not the quote from the book that I have for FnP, so I don't know where you're getting that wording from. Are you just adding in the blue text? Because that confuses people and you shouldn't quote rules in that manner without clearly saying you're altering the wording of the rules.

Well, I figured that highlighting the addition in bright blue might be enough of a hint, especially as I'd previously quoted the actual rule in my earlier post.

Quote :

My argument for interpretation doesn't require adding in lines of text that don't exist.

Your version involves reading words that don't exist (that ID confers to wounds from attacks), mine involves writing them. As the RAW situation is unclear I don't really see that either method is more or less valid.

Quote :

All the rules fall comfortably into place if you follow my interpretation of the 1 contentious line, whereas if you follow yours, you have to alter OTHER lines in other places to make it function properly. To me, that would indicate the the interpretation that requires the least alteration of other sections of the book is likely the correct one.

What 'OTHER' sections require alteration? To me, the simple alteration I suggested to FNP involves no actual changes and simply allows the rule to function in what appears to be the intended manner. If you follow the FNP rule strictly it never functions as there's no such thing as an unsaved wound with the Instant Death rule.

I find myself agreeing with the Count here.

Unstoppable turns ID into D3 wounds instead, but doesn't provide an exemption from ID negating FNP.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

hydranixx wrote:

If you can kill most of the bikes by the end of your turn 1, which by all accounts is not unreasonable

This is assuming you go first. If you don't, I'd imagine at least 3 units would be dead. That said, if you DO go first, that's probably the best sort of bet for DE, to simply play objectives.

Yeah, I feel where you're coming from - relying entirely on going first makes this list have hardly good odds. But in the hands of a decent Dark Eldar player, getting that first turn would give you a very good chance to win a non-KP game with this list.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

hydranixx wrote:

Once you hit turn 4, you can safely throw the Wyches at the WK as they can hold him up with their 4++ and Fearless for the rest of the game.

6's on the stomp chart ignore invuln saves. Since there are 4 fight phases per turn and an average of 2 stomps per phase, that's 4 stomps per turn, which will mean you're more likely than not to get at least 1 6, plus his normal 8 attacks per turn.

6's to stomp do hurt, but for every '6' to determine the strength, there's equally the same chance for a '1' to actually wound. Still, I understand your point. To clarify my intentions, I don't expect all 10 Wyches to literally sit locked in combat for multiple assault phases in a row - I need only have a single Wych unit survive with a single model for my charging assault phase to completely nullify his following turn. Perfectly reasonable with 5 Fearless and 4++ wounds.

If (when) he kills the first Wych unit and breaks free during the assault phase of his turn, I can shoot him again and then feed him my remaining Wych unit, which could potentially survive long enough at this point (turn 5/6) to close the game out. If they're fighting on top of an object, even better; obsec ftw.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

It'd be interesting to see how the list fared if they went first, though. The wraithknight doesn't get many attacks, so he'd probably kill 1-2 vehicles per turn, and maybe get the occasional charge. I think the wraithknight would probably have to try to table you if you killed both units of scatterbikes at the top of turn 1, depending on the mission.

I also never thought I'd find any use for Wyches. But in this highly specific case, they're actually pretty good; potential 4++ and Fearless so they actually start to remind me of Thousand Sons.

Count Adhemar wrote:

As the RAW situation is unclear I don't really see that either method is more or less valid.

I can agree it's certainly not as clear as it should be. Honestly, it doesn't really matter to me one way or the other how TOs rule it, but it should probably get brought up to TOs at large tournaments so that we know their take beforehand.

hydranixx wrote:

I also never thought I'd find any use for Wyches. But in this highly specific case, they're actually pretty good; potential 4++ and Fearless so they actually start to remind me of Thousand Sons.

Yeah, they'd need to live till turn 4 though, which is still a tall order with a wraithknight running around not taking damage from anything. It's just so furiatingly difficult to damage a wraithknight as DE. I ran the math on what it would take to drop a wraithknight in cover with poison alone in a single turn, and it was over 2100 points worth of venoms and warriors in rapid fire range.

But like I said, it'd be interesting to see the matchup all the same. Too bad you don't live nearby, or I'd suggest a game in which I let you have first turn and we roll for mission but don't allow purge the alien so we could test out the theory.

To be fair, Vassal's a thing if you ever decide you wanted to try it. One could even solitaire the lists to test out. Though, I generally find myself loading up the Malifaux module whenever I start up Vassal haha... Malifaux is dope, and guaranteed to be more fun than shooting 2100 points at a Wraithknight.

I won't derail the topic further; 500 pts is a strong place for Dark Eldar even if they can't make stupidly cheesy lists like the Eldar one in question.

hydranixx wrote:

I won't derail the topic further; 500 pts is a strong place for Dark Eldar even if they can't make stupidly cheesy lists like the Eldar one in question.

Agreed. And I have used vassal before. I've got it on this PC(probably an outdated version), but I'm certainly no adept at using it. I've played maybe 2-3 games on it. Would be willing to give a game or two a try, though I'm of the opinion that it really doesn't simulate line of sight well since it's on a 2d plane. Things do/don't get cover saves when they probably shouldn't/should. That said, PM me if you're interested sometime. I don't think we're supposed to talk too much about vassal other than being allowed to inform people it exists and can be used for..stuff.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I ran the math on what it would take to drop a wraithknight in cover with poison alone in a single turn, and it was over 2100 points worth of venoms and warriors in rapid fire range.

I'd like to see your maths on this. I came up with 1,316 points worth of venoms (just over 20) or alternatively 972 points of warriors in rapid fire range (121.5)


I got to this by doing the following:

1 poison shot has:

2/3 chance of hitting.

1/6 chance of wounding.

1/3 chance of knight failing their armor save.

2/3 chance of knight failing FNP.

No cover save as it already takes its armor save.

So 2/3 x 1/6 x 1/3 x 2/3 = 4/162 = 2/81

So 40.5 poison shots are needed to wound a WK and 243 are needed to killing it.




Warriors in rapid fire range get 2 so 121.5 warriors needed, or 20.25 venoms.

Kehmor wrote:

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I ran the math on what it would take to drop a wraithknight in cover with poison alone in a single turn, and it was over 2100 points worth of venoms and warriors in rapid fire range.

I'd like to see your maths on this. I came up with 1,316 points worth of venoms (just over 20) or alternatively 972 points of warriors in rapid fire range (121.5)


I got to this by doing the following:

1 poison shot has:

2/3 chance of hitting.

1/6 chance of wounding.

1/3 chance of knight failing their armor save.

2/3 chance of knight failing FNP.

No cover save as it already takes its armor save.

So 2/3 x 1/6 x 1/3 x 2/3 = 4/162 = 2/81

So 40.5 poison shots are needed to wound a WK and 243 are needed to killing it.




Warriors in rapid fire range get 2 so 121.5 warriors needed, or 20.25 venoms.

You're right. I was working from memory. I appologize. The number that was over 2100 was for kabalite warriors on jinking gunboats with splinter racks outside of rapid fire range. Pretty sure it was in an ACTUAL list format also, rather than just using unbound lists of units. But either way, my mistake.

Still, 20 venoms isn't exactly something people are really bringing to bear against wraithknights. They just don't have the firepower to bring them down. If you have any AT in your list, you probably don't have 20 venoms worth of splinter fire that you can direct towards a wraithknight.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

You're right. I was working from memory. I appologize. The number that was over 2100 was for kabalite warriors on jinking gunboats with splinter racks outside of rapid fire range. Pretty sure it was in an ACTUAL list format also, rather than just using unbound lists of units. But either way, my mistake.

Still, 20 venoms isn't exactly something people are really bringing to bear against wraithknights. They just don't have the firepower to bring them down. If you have any AT in your list, you probably don't have 20 venoms worth of splinter fire that you can direct towards a wraithknight.

Yeah true - but worth keeping in mind that currently if it is just 1000 points - just in case they ever change poison vs gargantuan to wound on a 5+ or something - that would make it a very viable option.

As for my list being unbound you could take the warriors with a single 10pt tax

Kehmor wrote:

Yeah true - but worth keeping in mind that currently if it is just 1000 points - just in case they ever change poison vs gargantuan to wound on a 5+ or something - that would make it a very viable option.

As for my list being unbound you could take the warriors with a single 10pt tax

Not really. Getting all those warriors within rapidfire range would be the problem. We can easily crunch the numbers, but that's assuming they can all get there, and they couldn't get in rapid-fire range without being multi-charged by a stomping wraithknight first, which basically stops all poison in it's tracks until it's done in combat, hopefully on it's own turn so you get a turn of shooting at it, because if not, it likely multi-charges and stomps some more if you're trying to be in rapidfire range.

So realistically, you'd be purchasing warriors in venoms to be able to get within rapidfire, or more realistically to remaing safe, simply depending on venomfire to provide your splinter fire, which means your venoms are going to be subject to a couple D shots per round also.

So in actual practice, to get 20 venoms would require at least 2 realspace raiders detachments. 2 Lhameans in venoms, 6x 5 warriors in venoms, and 12 fast attack venoms. That's 1560 before you've paid for any anti-tank. But congrats! You can now, on average, take down a wraithknight in one turn(as long as you go first). I wonder what he did with the other 1550 points of his army....

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Kehmor wrote:

Yeah true - but worth keeping in mind that currently if it is just 1000 points - just in case they ever change poison vs gargantuan to wound on a 5+ or something - that would make it a very viable option.

As for my list being unbound you could take the warriors with a single 10pt tax

Not really. Getting all those warriors within rapidfire range would be the problem. We can easily crunch the numbers, but that's assuming they can all get there, and they couldn't get in rapid-fire range without being multi-charged by a stomping wraithknight first, which basically stops all poison in it's tracks until it's done in combat, hopefully on it's own turn so you get a turn of shooting at it, because if not, it likely multi-charges and stomps some more if you're trying to be in rapidfire range.

So realistically, you'd be purchasing warriors in venoms to be able to get within rapidfire, or more realistically to remaing safe, simply depending on venomfire to provide your splinter fire, which means your venoms are going to be subject to a couple D shots per round also.

So in actual practice, to get 20 venoms would require at least 2 realspace raiders detachments. 2 Lhameans in venoms, 6x 5 warriors in venoms, and 12 fast attack venoms. That's 1560 before you've paid for any anti-tank. But congrats! You can now, on average, take down a wraithknight in one turn(as long as you go first). I wonder what he did with the other 1550 points of his army....

Obviously, as I said before, this is completely an unviable solution - personally I believe getting Taos into combat with it is by far the most reliable. But, as I mention, I only corrected you on your numbers as it is worth keeping in mind should thye ever change the way poison interacts with gargantuans.

If for instance they changed it to a 5+ wounds then all of a sudden around 500 points of poison could down a WK in one turn - which really isn't a bad investment at all considering how useful those units are anyway.

Kehmor wrote:

If for instance they changed it to a 5+ wounds then all of a sudden around 500 points of poison could down a WK in one turn - which really isn't a bad investment at all considering how useful those units are anyway.

My point was, that even if they made it 5+(which I agree would be far more useful), it would still be more than 500 points worth of poison. You could do it with 10 venoms instead of 20, sure. And that IS more likely to be seen in a list, I'll give you that. But when you include the other elements of the list necessary to purchase those 10 venoms(that aren't necessarily going to be useful while trying to kill a wraithknight), it's significantly more than 500 points, even at 5+.

But I do agree. If they changed it to where gargantuans suffer wounds from poison on a 5+ instead of 6+, it'd be way better for us. My initial thought was to suggest that they just penalize the poison by 1, but that would make gargantuans pretty vulnerable to things like Lhameans at that point, and I don't know that they should be.

They simply should make Lheamean weapons Flesh bane...

Has anyone actually used a Lheamean squad as a witch substitution?

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Kehmor wrote:

If for instance they changed it to a 5+ wounds then all of a sudden around 500 points of poison could down a WK in one turn - which really isn't a bad investment at all considering how useful those units are anyway.

My point was, that even if they made it 5+(which I agree would be far more useful), it would still be more than 500 points worth of poison. You could do it with 10 venoms instead of 20, sure. And that IS more likely to be seen in a list, I'll give you that. But when you include the other elements of the list necessary to purchase those 10 venoms(that aren't necessarily going to be useful while trying to kill a wraithknight), it's significantly more than 500 points, even at 5+.

But I do agree. If they changed it to where gargantuans suffer wounds from poison on a 5+ instead of 6+, it'd be way better for us. My initial thought was to suggest that they just penalize the poison by 1, but that would make gargantuans pretty vulnerable to things like Lhameans at that point, and I don't know that they should be.

I think we'd be in a great spot if they made that change - you don't *have* to down it in one turn and the poison to do it in two would definitely be in most 1850 lists I'd say plus any anti tank we have.

Kehmor wrote:

I think we'd be in a great spot if they made that change - you don't *have* to down it in one turn and the poison to do it in two would definitely be in most 1850 lists I'd say plus any anti tank we have.

I agree we'd be in a much better position. I still wouldn't call it "great". They need to unscrew our codex, and reverse at least half of the 30+ stat nerfs they performed between last codex and this one. Once they do that, give us decent formations, bring back our beloved characters, plus change out how gargantuan creatures interact with sniper/poison weapons, then we'll be in a great place.